Successfully Inducing The Congregation Of Mulitiple Felis Catus
by Baroness Emma
Summary: Spock gets adopted. First in my "Unconventional Vulcans" trilogy.


**A/N - **A oneshot that contributes to the storyarc of "The Tides Of Vulcan", but it is not necessary to read that to understand this. :)

Enjoy!

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**Warning** \- This story contains several pounds of fluff. Those looking for plot need not apply. You have been warned.

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**Successfully Inducing The Orderly Congregation Of Multiple Felis Catus Of The Family Felidae Of The Order Carnivora**

**~or~ **

**Herding Cats**

* * *

_The fat cat on the mat_

_may seem to dream. . ._

**Part One - Routine**

Your eyes open at precisely 0400. There is no need for you to consult the chronometer at your bedside, for your internal sense of time is functioning at optimum accuracy. You deliberately and unhurriedly fold back the duvet that covers you, lightly swinging yourself out of bed, and you strip off the nightclothes that both Human propriety and San Francisco's perpetual chilliness demand that you wear.

A shower. With water. Very hot.

A heated towel to dry yourself.

A shave.

A comb.

Your heavy black satin meditation robe. The belt tied. Just so.

Your _asenoi_ lighted.

Incense.

Peace.

Exactly an hour later, you rise, refreshed in spirit.

You eat. It scarcely matters what, so long as the nutritional and caloric content is within your necessary parameters.

Today, it is Vulcan-style yoghourt, exactly two-hundred and twenty-five grams of Terran sourced crisped rolled oats, and three fresh, ripe peaches.

Acceptable.

You clean the kitchen of all signs of your breakfast.

You clean your teeth.

You dress in the Academy's standard uniform for cardiovascular exercise.

You pour a liter of chilled Vulcan tea into a special water-sac which can be strapped upon your back, with a straw curving around so that you can drink without stopping your routine, or splashing and wasting the liquid. You put it on.

You put two tiny wraparound earpieces in your ears, dialing them to play a continuous loop of the two hour playlist you have downloaded onto them.

Mozart.

Bracing yourself, you step out into the cold fog.

0541.

You are exactly on schedule.

Running.

Streets. Buildings. Fog.

Vivaldi.

Plants. Sand. The beach.

Rocks. Cobblestones. An otherwise empty athletic track.

The same streets again, but in reverse order.

Beethoven. Berlioz. K'taren. Ekth-mayn. Xian Xinghai. Zhenni Ma. TqolK-cha Ergin. Mahler.

Twelve kilometers.

Your dorm room again.

Another shower. Sonic this time.

A comb.

The standard Academy cadet's uniform. A PADD. An identity/credit chit. A tall thermos of Vulcan tea, hot this time, and sweetened with Terran honey.

0645.

Classes.

Advanced Applied Xenobotony. Post-graduate Organic Xenochemistry.

_Suus mahna _practice at the gymnasium.

Lunch at a nearby cafe. Vulcan soup, Indian bread, Andorian fruit.

Classes again.

Advanced Applied Subspace Communications 3. Advanced Applied Long-Range Scanning 3.

Sensor Lab.

The library.

Studying.

1900.

Dinner.

Terran pasta, Vulcan vegetable and cream sauce, Betazoid fruit juice.

More cleansing of the kitchen and your teeth.

Your meditation robe again.

Your firepot lit again.

More incense.

2130.

More studying. Progress on your third master's thesis.

2315.

You dress for bed.

You go to bed.

You attempt to sleep.

Every minute of your days are accounted for, filled, and in some way profitable.

You lay awake, feeling empty.

You know there is something missing, but you do not know what it is.

* * *

**Part Two - Anomaly**

The first thing you notice is a strange mewling noise when you step out into the fog to take your morning run. You dismiss it, as you must do all minor anomalies.

You take your run.

You return.

The strange noise has not stopped. In fact, it has grown louder.

The fog has cleared since you left, and now you can see it - a small gray lump of mewling fur at the far end of the porch.

You approach it, curious.

It is a cat, or rather, two cats. Kittens. Dirty, tiny, shivering, and clearly starving. You go inside to fetch a towel and a box, and decide for once you can afford to skip your morning classes.

Your journey to the vet is swift and decisive. So is he. They are washed, fed, and stabilized within the hour. He calls you into the recovery room where they have been given an infant warming tray to lie in.

The vet talks to you.

They are both male, no more than three weeks old.

Possibly the mother abandoned them, but she was probably wild, and got injured or killed.

There is nothing wrong with them other than malnutrition and a few minor skin abrasions he has already healed.

If they are given proper food and attention from now on, the veterinarian says, the kittens will live. If not, they will die.

You ask about professional pet foster care.

He tells you that all such places are replete with feral cats. Most likely they would survive at one, but would not be given enough attention to become fully domesticated. They would never be proper pets. They would probably never be adopted.

You look at them, stretched out on their sides next to each other, sprawled slightly, their now full bellies comically at odds with their otherwise emaciated forms.

You are somehow reminded of the constellation Gemini.

Suddenly, they have names. They are Castor and Pollux.

You reach out and touch their tiny grey-furred ears, soft and fluffy from their recent bath. Castor is an elegant middle-toned grey all over, with one black patch rakishly covering his left eye and half of his left ear, and Pollux is only two or three shades darker a grey, but with four perfect white socks and a fluffy white dicky. Their ears twitch at your touch. Pollux opens his eyes and mews at you, his expression entirely content. For a moment, the gesture reminds you so strikingly of I-Chaya that an inexpressible pain grips your lower stomach.

Now, nothing could induce you to give them up.

* * *

**Part Three - A New Order**

Aspects of them may remind you of your sehlat, but caring for twin kittens bears almost no similarity to your experiences with I-Chaya.

You have rented a contraption from the clinic - a soft, high-sided box with two false teats built into one side. There is a container attached on the outside where you can place warmed replicated milk. You place them into the furry box, expecting them to attempt to climb out or fail to accept food from the teats which are so obviously fake to your eyes.

But it works. "Like a charm", as your mother would say.

You watch them contentedly sucking for far longer than you should. You are now late for your afternoon classes. You still do not wish to leave them. You consider setting up a holocam over their box so you do not have to.

You shake your head. When did you become so illogical?

It takes a week for them to do much of anything more than eat, sleep and defecate. You clean them, and feed them, and watch them sleep. They have apparently already learned to purr. You are relieved that you not need to teach them this. Their wide, grey-yellow eyes blink at you, asking questions you do not know how to answer, even to yourself.

You are more engaged during these activities than you are in your coursework.

You attempt to feel ashamed.

You cannot manage to do so.

* * *

In the middle of the second week, they climb out of the basket for the first time. You thought you were prepared for this eventuality.

You were not.

Instead of simply tottering about, exploring feebly on still-unsteady legs, and then returning to their soft warm bed, as you assumed all infant animals did, they come to you, where you sit at your monitor, attempting to concentrate on your thesis.

They will not let you.

They claw at your pant legs, and gnaw quite ungently on your ankles. You are not certain how, but Castor gets one of his rear claws firmly entangled in the knit heel of one of the socks you are wearing. Then Pollux pushes his head so far up one of your pant legs that he forgets where he is, and cannot extricate himself. Instead, he digs in with all four sets of claws, and sets up a piteous miaowing. After you finally remove both of them from this tangle, you discover at least two dozen small cuts all over your person, leaking your bright green blood.

The next day, you acquire a thing called a "scratching post", and a small basket full of assorted toys.

* * *

You find you must "house train" them.

You have already obtained the most highly recommended litter box available, complete with what the pet store owner assured you was the best litter for kittens just learning to use such a facility.

They refuse to use it.

Even placing their favorite treats of fresh mint leaves in the box will not induce them to enter it to defecate.

You place them in it.

They jump out.

You hold them in.

They wriggle out.

They watch your feet move as you walk, your stylus move as you write on your PADD, your communicator move as you talk to anyone who has advice on how to induce kittens to use a litter box.

And then you remember I-Chaya again, and how he too was obsessed with moving objects.

You take a long braided piece of colored yarn, dragging it across the floor too quickly for them to catch it. You let them catch it. You take it away again and they follow it. You dangle it over the litter box, and they jump into it. You let them have the yarn - to make sure they stay in the box until they have used it at least once. After they finally do, you take the yarn again and they follow it out.

You wonder how many times you must do this before they learn.

In the meantime, you re-learn how to play.

* * *

You have never prepared meat before. The smell of the first commercially produced canned food you try nearly causes you to vomit. The same goes for the bag of dry food you recklessly open before you read the label.

You have a difficult time accepting that you have just inhaled the scent of _bone meal_.

You decide to compromise.

After several trials, and many errors, you discover a perfectly adequate vegetarian dry food that they seem to enjoy, and you concede that you can endure the smell of meat once a day, so long as it is _fresh_ and _raw_. Meat in such a state seems far more natural to you than the odor of cooked putrefaction that permeates most commercially packaged pet-grade meat products.

You program such things as "ground beef" and "salmon mince" into your replicator, and they never know the difference.

* * *

You have them neutered. It was not an easy choice.

You know that it is the wise thing to do, but you remember being four years old, and seeing I-Chaya greet his mate and pups.

You also remember your mother acquiring one of those pups for you after I-Chaya died.

You never "got along" as well with I-Kerya as you did with her father, but you concede that her presence was a good thing.

For a long two days you debate whether or not Castor and Pollux should ever have offspring.

In the end, you remember how you found them.

No one else should have to deal with the situation you now have because of the actions of your cats.

They will never have have offspring, but you do not hold that against them.

You may never have offspring either.

* * *

They have a perfectly adequate bed - two high-quality cotton towels folded up on the bottom of a sturdy cardboard box - but after they have been with you six weeks they refuse to use it, insisting on sleeping in your bed, and on you, instead.

Many is the time now that you have awakened to find a cold nose pressed to yours, and amber-grey eyes staring into your soul.

Many is the time you awake to a leaping pounce on your feet, or to a purring, ecstatic, _clawing_ massage of your entire person.

The latter has become so common that you have banned them from sleeping under the duvet. They may sleep on you all they wish, but they will _not_ awaken underneath the duvet, and begin to claw at the first thing within reach anymore. Your journey to the emergency room was painful, and embarrassing in the extreme, but your doctor has said the damage was quite minimal.

You wish you could forget the laughter in his eyes.

* * *

Pollux has taken to perching himself on one of your shoulders whenever you sit down.

It is quite absurd.

It makes you look like some comical pastiche of an ancient Egyptian sphinx and a sailor with a gaudy parrot.

Castor decides he will not be one-upped by his brother, and he takes to curling up on your lap every time you sit down. The rumbling contented purr he gives is deceptive, for he takes this lap-sitting most seriously. If you try and stand before he is finished, he will hook his claws into your clothes, and hang there, against where _his lap should be_, and, still purring, will look at you reproachfully until you sit down again.

All this has made studying your coursework a brand new kind of challenge.

* * *

For once, you dream. It is a clear, simple image of a huge grassy field, green with every kind of smell. In the distance is a wide span of trees and the sound of rushing leaves washes over your ears. The long blades of grass are cool and wave in the breeze. You stalk through the green growth, master of everything you see.

When you wake, there are two small heads pressed on either side of yours. The shared meld points indicate you have just witnessed their dreams, not your own.

You remember that your residency on Earth is not a permanent situation.

You also remember that Starfleet is sometimes a dangerous place.

You think of your Grandmother Grayson, who lives on a big, grassy farm in the middle of Washington State. You also remember that she has asked on numerous occasions if there is anything she can do for you.

Satisfied, you go back to sleep again.

* * *

You find yourself talking to them.

It is quite illogical.

You find you do not care.

It has been rare for you to find anyone who will listen to things you say without making comment.

In this respect, they are ideal.

You acknowledge that there are many ways in which they are _not_ ideal, but you excuse them for it, given that they are non-sentient animals.

You also look forward to coming home at night far more than you ever used to do.

You refuse to ask yourself why.

But you know that it has something to do with the fact that every time you leave, there are two sets of eyes that follow you until you are out of sight.

You know there is still something more that is missing from your life, but now you think, possibly, you know what it might be.

* * *

Cat

The fat cat on the mat

may seem to dream

of nice mice that suffice

for him, or cream;

but he free, maybe,

walks in thought

unbowed, proud, where loud

roared and fought

his kin, lean and slim,

or deep in den

in the East feasted on beasts

and tender men.

The giant lion with iron

claw in paw,

and huge ruthless tooth

in gory jaw;

the pard dark-starred,

fleet upon feet,

that oft soft from aloft

leaps upon his meat

where woods loom in gloom -

far now they be,

fierce and free,

and tamed is he;

but fat cat on the mat

kept as a pet

he does not forget.

* * *

=/\=

* * *

"Cat" by J.R.R. Tolkien can be found at - tolkiengateway wiki/Cat _%28poem%29


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